I made my first theft at a rest stop off the Garden State Parkway near Brick. That wasn’t really true. I’d stolen baby things before: a pack of Score baseball cards, Pop Rocks, the occasional wine cooler. Not that I couldn’t afford them, but for the thrill. How my heart thumped like mad when I’d leave a store with my stolen prizes. The Pop Rocks that burst in my mouth with even more flavor than they would’ve if I’d paid. Chalked it up to suburban blahs. The curse of Jersey. Nothing to do outside of the malls, and I hated the malls.
So, I knew I had quick hands and was good. Little unassuming me with my nice face. I could look as innocent as they come. The Gas-Guzzler having to make another refuel while I staked out the 7-Eleven. Told my family I wanted Gummi Bears and would be back. Barry, slipping me a dollar, like he was afraid to part with the money. That was when I made a decision that we needed more to survive.
An old man was manning the cash register, barely able to stay upright. He blinked his rheumy eyes when I walked in, and the bell dinged. I decided to buy the Gummi Bears and then ask to use the bathroom before I’d figure out a way to distract him from the register.
Paying for the Gummi Bears, I sang the cartoon theme song over and over in my head to quiet my nerves.
Gummi Bears, bouncing here and there and everywhere.
High adventure that’s beyond compare.
They are the Gummi Bears.
They are the Gummi Bears!
He rooted around for the change, handing me a dime and a quarter.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, turning on my kid charm. “And do you have a bathroom?”
He handed me a key and pointed toward the back.
Inside the bathroom, I stared in the mirror, psyching myself up. Your family needs you. Get that money. Get that money, chump. I turned the faucet on hard so the water would spill to the floor. Then I flexed a puny muscle and marched out.
“Excuse me,” I said to the old guy. “Would you be able to give me ten pennies for a dime?”
He cocked his head to one side, eyebrows sloping down.
“My little sister loves pennies, collects them.”
He pushed the register button, the tray springing out.
“I was a coin collector, too,” he said, gumming his tongue like it was a foreign object. “Got some from the eighteen hundreds back home; they were my Grandpap’s.”
I widened my eyes. “Wow. Oh, I apologize, but I think the toilet is overflowing.”
“What?”
“I flushed and flushed, but water is spilling everywhere.”
“Well, what—why didn’t you say that first?”
“I was embarrassed because it was from my pee.”
“Oh, jeez.” He closed the tray and exited the booth, locking it behind him before grabbing a mop and rushing to the bathroom. I knew there were cameras watching, but by the time they’d review the tapes, we’d be gone. In the glass partition was a hole big enough to exchange money and goods. I plunged my thin arm through and hit the no-sale button to open the cash register. Grabbed two fistfuls full of dollars and ran out of there so fast you’d have thought my hair was on fire.
Stuffing the money into my hoodie, I jumped into the RV and told Barry to drive out of there, since I saw a weird man in the 7-Eleven and was afraid he might try to follow.
“What did he do to you?” Barry asked.
“He had no nose,” I said. Once, while in New York City on a class trip, I passed by a man who had no nose, only a hollow space where it used to be. It gave me nightmares ever since.
“No nose?” Mom asked.
“Drive! Can we just drive?”
Barry shrugged and stepped on the gas. I looked out the back window, wondering if I would see the old man come outside. But he was too withered and slow. He had probably only turned the faucet off by then and was mopping the spill, cursing at me, not even realizing yet what I’d taken. I sat on the bottom bunk bed, shadowed in the darkness, and counted. Tens and twenties flipping before me, about three hundred bucks in total.
Now, I needed to figure out how to tell Barry what I’d done while making him realize this was a good thing.
My chance came at night, Steph and Jenny already sleeping in their bunk beds, Mom crawling up top to the bed in the nook she and Barry shared that was basically above the driver and passenger’s heads. I’d gotten in my PJs and curled into the shotgun seat. Watched the dark road before us, the headlights illuminating the yellow lines. Barely any traffic in sight. We must’ve been in Delaware.
“I want to make good time,” Barry said, wiping the sweat from his upper lip. The heater had been on full blast. “The faster we get to Florida, the less we’ll have to spend on food.”
I laid the three hundred bucks on the dashboard between us. Not a word was spoken as he took in the magnitude. Where could I have possibly gotten that kind of money? I had an allowance of ten bucks a week, but these tubular funds would’ve meant that I never spent anything. A suspicious eye glanced in my direction.
“Where did you get that?” he finally asked.
I cleared my throat. “Dad.” This was when I still called him Dad. Soon enough, he would become Barry, only Barry. But back then, I’d never thought to consider him anything but a father. “I know that money is tight.”
He exhaled through his nose in two powerful spurts.
“You didn’t bring that money with you?”
I shook my head back and forth. He raised his eyebrow.
“The last gas station?”
I nodded. The RV quiet with the girls all down and no music coming from the radio. The road, so empty, like we didn’t exist anywhere. Nothing permanent, which frightened and exhilarated me at the same time, us Gimmelmans as ghosts.
“How much is there?” he asked, wetting his lips as he reached over and pocketed the cash.
“Almost three hundred.”
“Well.”
“Are you mad?”
“Why did you feel you needed to do this?”
“I want to help.”
“I don’t need you to help.”
My shoulders slumped forward, face going hot. “I’m sorry.”
He tousled my hair. “Nothing to be sorry for. You’re figuring out ways to get us out of a tough spot. Can’t knock you for that.”
“Are you gonna tell me stealing is wrong?”
The words simmered, prickled in the air. His hand moved from my hair to my shoulders, kneading the muscles like I was dough.
“What do you think, bud?”
I carefully thought of my response. “Haven’t we been stolen from? They took all of our stuff.”
He chuckled. “That they did. Hey, cheer up,” he said, because I probably looked glum. “We’ll keep this between us. And we’re too far away from that gas station to turn back and give you a lesson. What’s done is done. And the extra dough means I don’t have to drive through the night.”
“Oh, okay.”
We passed a rest stop, and Barry pulled off of the highway, parked the RV amongst a field of trees. We were the only ones resting there.
“Pretty shitty I put you guys in this situation,” he said as he was about to head up to the bed with Mom. We were whispering so as not to wake anyone. The lights turned off, only lit by a thin moon.
“I’m thinking of it as an adventure.”
“Ha, yeah okay. Not quite like the adventures those Miami Vice guys go on that you like so much.”
“No, but that doesn’t make it any less of one.”
“I’ll get us back on track.”
If the lights had been on fully, I would’ve seen him tearing up. I was glad they weren’t. No one should witness their dad crying—it turns him into a regular person. I heard him sniffle some, but imagined it was the heater puffing.
“I will,” he declared, with one last tousle of my hair. Then he vanished up to bed.
I didn’t sleep that night like I’d taken a drug. The adrenaline coursing through my veins, heart pumping to the Jan Hammer Miami Vice theme running through my head, and the word “adventure” flowing from my mouth like a wonderful secret.